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September 14, 2010

Colonial Williamsburg’s website, www.history.org, counts down the days to the Nov. 2 midterm elections with a new feature that encourages citizen participation in the site and in the election.

Every day, www.history.org/elections tallies the number of days to the 2010 midterm elections with calls to action for all who visit the page and a reminder of why these elections matter.

Users can register to vote and find polling locations and information about how to become a poll worker on Election Day. A voting timeline game tests knowledge of the history of voting rights in America, while podcasts and Colonial Williamsburg journal articles explore how “we the people” created our form of self-government. In short, every resource a curious citizen or student of this country’s voting system needs to become involved is included or linked on the pages of the new feature.

A link to Colonial Williamsburg’s citizenship site, iCitizenForum.com, provides site visitors the opportunity to discuss and debate current election issues and share ideas about other topical events.

Citizenship education is a major initiative of Colonial Williamsburg, whose mission “that the future may learn from the past” drives the website, Teacher Institute programs, Electronic Field Trips, publications, museum exhibitions and the Revolutionary City program, which takes place daily on the streets of Colonial Williamsburg’s Historic Area. The program invites visitors to get involved in the discussion and illustrates that the country was founded by ordinary people – farmers, bankers, tailors, printers, shopkeepers, wigmakers, people of color and even women – not just the famous scholars, generals and plantation owners we think of as our founders.

Established in 1926, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation is the not-for-profit educational institution that preserves and operates the restored 18th-century Revolutionary capital of Virginia as a town-sized living history museum, telling the inspirational stories of our nation’s founding men and women. Williamsburg is located in Virginia’s Tidewater region, 20 minutes from Newport News, within an hour’s drive of Richmond and Norfolk, and 150 miles south of Washington, D.C., off Interstate 64. For more information about Colonial Williamsburg, call 1-800-HISTORY or visit Colonial Williamsburg’s Web site at www.history.org